


ch-ch-cherry bomb

by opensummer



Series: get down ladies, you've got nothin' to lose [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, F/F, Female Peter Quill, Female-Centric, Gen, Internalized Misogyny, Kink Meme, Podfic Available, The Author is Terrible at Naming Things, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-23 20:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2554784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensummer/pseuds/opensummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes her team forgets Peter is a woman. She lets them. Kinkmeme Fill</p>
            </blockquote>





	ch-ch-cherry bomb

**Author's Note:**

> Fem!Peter fic. identity issues ahoy! AKA I started out with something to say and it devolved from there.  
> Kinkmeme prompt [here](http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com/1806.html?thread=171278#t171278)
> 
> Edit 7.5.17: [Dr_Fumbles_McStupid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid/pseuds/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid) made me a podfic and it is the literal _Best Thing Ever_ check it out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11407002/).

Peter is crude and charismatic and brilliant and she figured that out when she was seventeen and people starting running when she called. She likes men’s pants because the pockets are better and combat boots and leather jackets. She keeps her hair hovering somewhere between shoulder and waist length but braids it tight against her skull and wears sports bras that crush her flat. She’s beautiful too but that’s more or less irrelevant, until it isn’t. 

Peter wants to fight and fuck and lie and steal. Later, Peter wants to be good. In short, Peter wants to live and she doesn’t think her gender has a thing to do with that.

The rest of the galaxy disagrees. 

+

Sometimes her team forgets Peter is a woman. She lets them. 

She’s got a list for that starting with the fact that she’s already the most breakable member of the team, she doesn’t need them treating her like more of a liability. Said list runs for four more pages, and concludes with  _fuck it boys have more fun anyway_  written so sharply she’d torn the page. Peter was fourteen when she wrote it. None of her reasons have changed. 

Dead center in this list is a rambling paragraph that makes her cringe every time she reads it. Nothing it says is untrue, and between the lines it says this- you can fight and scrabble and scream and curse and the galaxy will give you nothing. This- Life isn’t fair. This- theres a less of a place for women then there is for men. 

And this- Even if you fight every fucking day for your right to be recognized as a person you will still be denied.

(She didn’t write this- it’s not worth it.)

(Her team understands this. She knew there was a reason she liked them better than the Ravagers.)

+

It starts here-

Sixteen years old and Peter’s got hips and tits for the first time. She can con a mark, steal a meal, shoot a man. She knows how to survive. Her hair is getting long again. She’s grooving her way along on Knowhere on her way back to the Ravager fleet, headphones firmly in place and gets slammed into a wall by a nonhuman who’s got a foot on her. Orange skin, big teeth and claws, vaguely reptilian in the face. Big, twice as broad as her and in a totally different weight class. It- He paws at her and he’s going to-  She kicks and fights and doesn’t scream. On Knowhere that’d just get her killed. So she bites and hits and gets an arm free to grab her gun. She fires. He’s not the first person she’s killed. She staggers back to the ship, leggings ripped up, bruises down the insides of her thighs. Yondu looks at her and asks “Anyone I need to kill for you girl?” 

This is the one and only time he calls her girl. She likes to think he cares. 

It starts here- 

Twelve and the new guy decides she’s too small, too weak to run with them, and yanks her headphones off her head and tosses them aside. She smiles at him bright and wide and every other Ravager in the room steps back. They know what that look is. She flings herself over the table and brings him down hard, slams his head into the floor and steps back. When he gets up she repeats until he stops getting up. Then she crouches and waves the walkman under his nose. _Mine,_ she says. 

It starts here-

Yondu cropping her hair short and calling her boy, all hillbilly drawl- a glitch in the universal translator they slapped on her, because a girl who can’t defend herself is meat and for some reason he’s decided to keep her. She bites him for daring to touch her hair and sprints for the engine, which is cramped and dark and the only place she can get to that they can’t. She doesn’t make it and they drag her back to finish the haircut and she spits and cusses and fights but Peter is a hell of a lot smaller than any of them. That’s a lesson in and of itself. 

It starts here- 

Her southern mother, with an accent as thick as molasses, giving her a boys name. Four years later, she punches out the Collin’s boy for mocking her name on the first day of pre-K and gets sent home. Her mom’s not sick yet so they bake cookies and dance to a mixtape. Her mom sends her back to school wearing a dress. She doesn’t own any trousers. Way to send mixed messages mom.  

Her name is Peter fuckyouverymuch and she bears it like a cross long after the metaphor becomes inappropriate.

+

It starts here too- 

The Tsyrani are matriarchal and have just enough dirty work that they keep the Ravagers on call. Their homeworld gives Yondu the heebie jeebies so he starts sending Peter in for pick up and drop offs soon as she’s old enough to pilot alone. It’s not a bad planet and after Peter breaks off from the Ravagers she goes back. 

The first person she meets groundsides name requires a throat stop the human biology isn't equipped with. Ellie, Peter calls her. She's tysrani- humanoid, with neon pink skin and insectoid eyes. They meet in a club and Peter buys her drink and takes her home. Over breakfast she despairs of Peter's clothes, and drags her shopping. What happens next Peter tends to remembers as an Terran movie montage. Shops, clothes, makeup from a specialized store for Novan complexions. There's music and dancing, screaming with laughter as they shimmy through dressing rooms and out of outfits. They get kicked out of two stores and buy what feels like half of three others and the montage ends with Peter spinning out and landing arms outstretched in front of the full length mirror in Ellie's apartment. Skirt, heels, leather jacket and red red lips.

(Look ma! Beautiful after all.)

Ellie is one who teaches Peter it's ok to like your body. That there's a power to looking the mirror and loving your reflection. That heels can make a man flinch and lipstick is meant to be the color of your enemies blood (which means her lips tend towards Ravager blue.) Ellie's the one who teaches her it's ok to like being a woman.

(She's also Peter's first real girlfriend and she makes a point of comming her at least once a month to check in.)

+

So sometimes her team forgets she’s a woman. Peter lets them. She's passed the stage where she would have thrown her gender in their faces and flaunted it for being better as a woman then most are as men. She's passed the stage where she would have treated her gender as unimportant because quote unquote fuck it boys have more fun anyway.  

They (the so called Guardians of the Galaxy) have been running together for three months when her monthly call to Ellie (and god hadn't she laughed when Peter had awkwardly confessed to saving the galaxy) ends with an invite to swing by Ellie's. Bring that team of yours, she'd instructed, we'll paint the town. 

Ellie's work is barely this side of legal, import and exports and she packed up and left Tysrani after one of her contacts sold her out to a competitor. She survived the bomb but a later attack gave her scars that even dermal regeneration can't remove. She based on Rigel-7 now and there's that old line- a more wretched hive of scum and villainy couldn't be found. 

The team fits right in.  

+

Peter leaves the team to their own devices while she gets ready for the night. Gamora needs a replacement for one of her blades and Rocket's looking for a couple things to trick out Groots pot. Drax is tagging along to bodyguard since the last time they took shore leave Gamora's many fans hadn't heard about her playing for the right side now. Peters got a couple bruises that still aren't fully healed from that encounter.   
   
She hogs the bathroom cause it's hard to get hot water in space (though the Milano is better about that since Nova Corp rebuilt it), unpins her hair and curls it slowly, taking her time, grooving along to Mixtape Part 2. Makeup, dress, heels. She wobbles for a moment when she stands upright and strides across the room, back forth. There's a knack to heels she needs to relearn, another to wearing skirts after months of pants.

She's the last one ready and Rocket is bitching about it when she leaves her room and strides through the ship not a wobble in her step. 

We good? she asks because they got quiet when she came in which in this group means something bad is going down. World ending, earth shattering bad. 

Drax is gaping, Rocket's probably doing the same but it's hard to tell under that fur, Gamora who has her hair up is complicated knot (which a. Damn. and b. What the hell? Gamora doesn't even put her hair up when she fights. She totally cares about meeting Peter's bestie.) looks smug. And Groot _wolf whistles._  

So yeah sometimes Peter’s team forgets she’s a woman. _She lets them._

**Author's Note:**

> Tysrani are the one and only matriarchal race in the marvel canon (which is an arguable word because comic and canons are unmixy things) and have appeared exactly once in a spiderwoman issue. They are a client race of the Shi’ar Empire.
> 
> Rigel-7 was destroyed by Thanos on a destruction kick and also only warranted one mention, when Thanos was on a redemption kick on Rigel-3.
> 
> Finally I'm on [tumblr](http://www.openemptysummer.tumblr.com/) come say hi.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I'm Your Wild Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3240773) by [Fox (Spacefoxen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacefoxen/pseuds/Fox)
  * [[podfic of] ch-ch-cherry bomb](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407002) by [Dr_Fumbles_McStupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid/pseuds/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid)




End file.
